Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (34 page)

“This is not—”

“I wouldn’t set you up again, Shell. I swear it.”

I believed her. My downfall has always been a belief in attractive women. “I’ll be bringing a friend,” I said.

“We all need friends.”

“Your place or somewhere else?”

She hesitated. “My place…I promise it isn’t a setup.”

“Give me a few. I’ll be there,” I said, looking over at Siobhan. “With my friend, remember.”

“I hope this puts us back on solid ground.”

“We never left,” I said, meaning it, and ended the call.

I moved and crouched down next to the sofa. Whispering Siobhan’s name didn’t stir her so I lightly shook her shoulder. She came alive in increments: eyes opening, blinking in confusion, then recollection; yawning; stretching; finally, smiling at the sight of my face.

“You’ve been on the phone off and on,” she said.

“Sorry if I disturbed you.”

“Whispering. Talking to girlfriends?” she asked, smiling.

“I’m a lone bird.”

She frowned. “I was joking. Why so serious?”

“We have to go.”

“Go? Where?”

“We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Something big is happening?”

I nodded.

“You want to tell me what?” she said.

I told her.

She rose without further hesitation. “I need to run across the street and wash my face, brush my teeth, then we can go. I’ll only be a moment.”

“I’ll be in the car.”

She made it as far as the door and looked back over her shoulder. The smile on her face wasn’t a full one. It was one of her tiny, nervous smiles.

It made my day.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“IT WAS A PIANO factory,” I explained. “They cut it up into two-bedroom lofts. Put in new appliances. There’s a gym, and each loft has rooftop access.”

Cherie buzzed us up just as I was finishing the description. I held the door open for Siobhan to pass through.

“Who is this woman?” she asked, unmoving.

It wasn’t a question borne from jealousy. The moment was too big for that level of triviality. Simple curiosity.

“A friend,” I said.

“You trust this friend?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, placated, and stepped inside. I looked behind me and surveyed the street one final time before I stepped in as well.

“So I guess my sketch helped,” Siobhan said.

“I guess so,” I said, unmoving myself now. I wasn’t sure Siobhan was up to the task at hand.

“I’m ready for this,” she whispered, reading my mind it seemed.

“How do you do that?”

“Read your thoughts?” she said, smiling.

“Yes.”

“You wear your thoughts on your face,” she said.

“Very few people have ever been able to read me.”

She smiled her tight smile once again and looked toward the elevator. I took her cue and lead us over to the elevator, then pressed the button for the car to deliver us to Cherie’s floor.

Cherie answered the door in a thin nightgown. No bra. Something or someone had stimulated her nipples. She barely made eye contact with either me or Siobhan as she said, “Come in. Have a seat in the living room. I just finished working a moment ago. I’ll go get dressed and we can go.”

She disappeared down the hall without speaking or introducing herself to Siobhan, without checking to make sure I closed up and locked the door behind me.

“Pleasant friend you have there,” Siobhan said.

“She’s usually a lot more personable,” I replied, regretting the words as soon as they passed my lips. Siobhan looked into my eyes. I cleared my throat and moved past her into the living room.

The too-convenient pile of records still covered most of a corner of the room. The small bookcase held the same slim volumes of poetry. Siobhan sat on the couch and glanced around. I chose to remain standing. The apartment was blanketed by the kind of silence only present in the most awkward moments.

“Your friend has eclectic tastes,” Siobhan announced finally.

“Cherie,” I said. “And yes she does.”

Siobhan nodded at the records. “Can’t go wrong with Miles.”

“You like jazz?”

“I like everything, Shell.”

“Glad to see you’re in a positive frame of mind today.”

“It’s all part of the boogie.”

“What?”

“The last few times I spoke with Renny that’s what he said. Don’t know how or where he picked it up. I told him it was cool…thirty years ago.”

“Renny is a strange, beautiful kid,” I remarked.

She looked at me. “He was.”

I swallowed. In the car I’d updated her on the Bishop Donald Theodore Holliday trail, but she hadn’t mentioned Nicky. I asked her about him now.

“I sat with him for a bit after you went out. He just kept talking. Nervous chatter, I suppose. Abuela being away and all, I offered to let him stay with me. I told him we had two days to party and then I had to prepare for my Abuela’s return.”

“I’m sure he loved that.”

“He said ‘I’d bet we don’t enjoy the same kind of party’. I told him that was all the better, we could introduce something new to each other. Playing along with him, trying to keep him upbeat, his thoughts from…” Her words trailed off in sadness.

“Sure.”

She forced a smile. “He said ‘If we’re talking about sex you’re missing a key ingredient, honey. Hope you’re creative’. I told him I was an artist at heart and he finally laughed.” She laughed then too, infused by the memory.

“He’s something else.”

“Sure is. He seemed okay when he finally left. Worried about his father. Promised to keep in touch. I gave him my number.”

“Lucky guy.”

“Oh? But I slept on your couch and waited for you.”

I smiled and looked down the hall toward Cherie’s bedroom. I was worried about her hearing my conversation with Siobhan. Foolish. Siobhan took one look at my face, adjusted her position on the sofa, and retreated into silence.

Cherie came out a few minutes later. “Shell, you could’ve gotten drinks. Oh wait…I’m thinking we’re at the other apartment. You don’t know your way around this one.”

I didn’t speak.

Cherie moved past me and, hand outstretched, offered a greeting to Siobhan. “I’m Cherie. You resemble the boy in the flyer.”

“Siobhan. The boy in the flyer is Renny. He’s my cousin.”

“Oh…sorry.”

“Is he bad?”

Cherie smiled without showing her teeth. “At the risk of sounding like a bumper sticker. One thing I’ve learned: it’s never so bad we can’t make it through it.”

“We’ve been tailgating the same cars.”

“There you go, Siobhan,” Cherie said.

I cleared my throat. “We should go.”

Cherie nodded.

TWENTY-EIGHT

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL day, the cloudless sky brightened by a pool of sunshine. We drove in mostly silence, Cherie directing me every so often to ‘turn left up ahead here’ and ‘make this next right here’. We did not travel particularly far but the oppressive traffic kept us moving at a slow crawl. My mood darkened like a sweat stain as the minutes ticked by on my dashboard clock. Siobhan sat quietly in the backseat but she might as well have been screaming the myriad thoughts I knew were jumping around in her head. I glanced in my rearview mirror and found her studying me curiously. She didn’t even bother to look away.

On the other hand, I could not hold her gaze, electing instead to focus on the landscape just outside of the car. We drove past a stretch of retail stores with steel gates and bullet-resistant tempered glass protecting their cashiers. The poverty of the neighborhood people muddied what little belief I had in the American dream. I stopped at a light and waved off a man carrying a squeegee in one hand and a spray bottle filled two thirds of the way with dirty water in the other. A vendor hawked wilted roses from a cart spraypainted with graffiti. A shapely Latina sauntered past in a too-tight black dress so short it offered a peek at her panties.

“Park anywhere along here,” Cherie said.

“What?” We had lived in silence for so long I didn’t immediately register her words.

“Park anywhere along here,” she said.

“Where we headed?”

She nodded at a little restaurant, the signage above the storefront written in Spanish. “I’ll go in and check things, then come out and let you know if it’s a go,” she said.

I hesitated.

Cherie smiled reassuringly. “I know how you feel about Nevada,” she said. “And yet you took the time to put those feelings aside and give me the flyer with Renny’s picture on it. That means you care an awful lot about him, too. I respect that, Shell. I’m not setting you up, I promise.”

There was truth in her eyes. I nodded and pulled into a space.

As soon as I parked, Cherie was out of the car and headed for the restaurant. I looked in the rearview again to gauge Siobhan’s reaction.

“There are so many things I want to say right now, Shell.”

“Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“She’s a prostitute?”

“Who?”

Siobhan raised an eyebrow. “Must I remind you that I can read your every thought?”

“I need to invest in a good pair of sunglasses,” I said, and immediately my stomach fluttered as I remembered my earliest experience with Nevada.

“I’d just ask you to remove them.”

I swallowed. Someday I would confess to Siobhan just how connected we were. “She’s a prostitute,” I admitted.

“You two have been involved.”

“The inflection of a question is absent from your voice,” I said.

“So it is.”

“It’s a complicated relationship, Siobhan.”

“I’m noticing a trend.”

I nodded, at a loss for words.

“Thank you,” she said, piercing the silence.

“What for?” I managed.

“I heard what Cherie said, about you giving her the flyer. You care about Renny.”

“I told you I did.”

“Sometimes I have to actually see things to believe them.”

“Ye’ of little faith.”

“I have faith in you, Shell. Despite myself, I do.”

“The inflection of sincerity is present in your voice,” I said, smiling.

“So it is.”

I looked into her eyes. This time I was able to hold the gaze. “The guy in the car…boyfriend?”

“You’re still stuck on that?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Now is not the time. Forget I asked.”

“No.”

“What?”

“He isn’t a boyfriend. I’m a free agent.”

“Emphasis on
free
,” I said, smiling.

She smiled back. “Nothing as obvious as money left on my nightstand. I deal in the currency of dinners, Broadway shows, flowers, thoughtful cards…jewelry. Typical of most women.”

“Nothing typical about you,” I said. “I’m glad we can joke about this.”

“The moment needs a degree of levity.”

The moment
. That sobering thought eased me back to reality. I looked toward the restaurant. “Cherie’s taking too long. I’m going in to check things out. I’ll leave the car running. If there’s any issues…drive away.”

“Renny’s my cousin, Shell. I should—”

“Drive away,” I said firmly.

“Have I thanked you?” she asked, the beginnings of wetness making her eyes shine.

“A moment ago,” I said, trusting myself with just those three words, and exiting the car immediately after I said them. I eased the driver’s-side door closed behind me and walked across cracked pavement toward the restaurant. My steps had the precision of a soldier in formation.

Cherie wasn’t inside.

The place was tiny. Two abused tables surrounded by a pair of even worse chairs. A guy with a scar from forehead to chin on one side of his face was sitting lazily in one of the chairs eating a Jamaican beef patty. His skin was the color of ink. Teeth adorned with platinum bling I noticed as he smiled knowingly in my direction. The nail of his right pinky was the length I would expect from a vain woman.

“We know one another?” I asked him.

“Nah, nah,” he said with little conviction.

“You’re smiling at me awful hard.”

“Post-coital bliss,” he said.

“What?”

“Those the only big words I know, chief. Don’t ask me to give you a definition, either. I turn mighty ignorant if I have to explain myself.”

“Right,” I said, through with talking to him. “You can get back to your Jamaican beef patty now.”

“Empanada.”

“Right,” I said, and looked away.

“And now’s when you completely turn your back on me and ask the woman behind the counter if she saw a white girl up in this piece. A little rough around the edges. About five-five. Blah, blah.”

I wheeled around to face him again. “Where is she?”

 He nodded at a door I had not even noticed. Restroom. “Probably gargling or some shit,” he said. “She was fumbling for a small bottle of green mouthwash in her pocketbook when I stepped back out here.”

“You need to chew all of your empanada. I’m having some trouble understanding you.”

His ever-present smile widened. “Who the fuck is Renny? Cherie sure is hot to know how to reach him.”

“What’s your name?” I asked calmly.

“Drummer,” he said. “Ask around about me.”

“Count on it.”

The restroom door creaked open. Cherie stepped out smoothing her clothes, pausing like a broken battery-powered toy once she noticed me.

Drummer said, “There she is Miss America,” in a singsong.

“I told you to wait outside, Shell,” Cherie said.

“Shell one of those hardheaded types,” Drummer said from over my shoulder. “Gotta bump his head a few times before he learns anything.”

I willed myself to ignore him.

“I didn’t want it like this,” I said to Cherie.

She bolted for the door. I allowed her to make it outside, then turned back to my new friend. “See you around, Drummer.”

“Count on it,” he said, smiling still.

Cherie stood outside with her back against the building, eyes closed, left hand balled in a tight fist. She was shaking. I moved beside her and started to say something.

“I’m numb to it,” she said, cutting me off. “Once you become numb, it’s not very difficult anymore.”

“I didn’t want it like this.”